


Weeds for Flowers (Song For The Sirens)

by BannedBloodOranges



Category: Return to Treasure Island (TV 1986), Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Betrayal, Bittersweet Ending, F/M, Failed Marriage and Failed Feelings, Hijacking, Long John is a bastard (but you already know that), M/M, Upon there are no easy choices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 01:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges
Summary: “I tell you what’s out there, Jim. The sea, that’s what! You think I don’t know that rover’s look in your eye? Thirty years I’ve kept this in, and I’ve seen that look in the eyes of a thousand men, seafaring men. Oh, it’s all home sweet home when they’re drinking their rum, but their hearts, they’re out there on the sea! And mostly their bodies end up on the bottom of it!”“That isn’t going to happen to me,” Jim promises to his mother, before her tongue can lash and cut him in two. “There’s a new world out there, and it won’t happen to me!”On the 23rd of May, Jim Hawkins wakes to the morning of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of the Grandee of Spain and to the memory of his mother’s voice, and the day is bright and fragrant and full of fear.





	Weeds for Flowers (Song For The Sirens)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the 1986 mini series. (Very flawed, but worth a watch. Has an excellent Long John Silver and a fascinating take on his relationship with Jim.)

_I am puzzled as the newborn child_  
_I am troubled at the tide:_  
_Should I stand amid the breakers?_  
_Should I lie with Death my bride?_  
_Hear me sing, "Swim to me, Swim to me, Let me enfold you:_  
_Here I am, Here I am, Waiting to hold you."_

Tim Buckley, _Song For The Siren._

 

* * *

 

 

_“I tell you what’s out there, Jim. The sea, that’s what! You think I don’t know that rover’s look in your eye? Thirty years I’ve kept this in, and I’ve seen that look in the eyes of a thousand men, seafaring men. Oh, it’s all home sweet home when they’re drinking their rum, but their hearts, they’re out there on the sea! And mostly their bodies end up on the bottom of it!”_

_“That isn’t going to happen to me,” Jim promises to his mother, before her tongue can lash and cut him in two. “There’s a new world out there, and it won’t happen to me!”_

 

On the 23rd of May, Jim Hawkins wakes to the morning of his marriage to Isabella, daughter of the Grandee of Spain and to the memory of his mother’s voice, and the day is bright and fragrant and full of fear.

The Caribbean settlement lushes outside his window, flourishing wild flowers and the toll of church bells beneath a puritan blue sky. With his groom’s outfit hung and preening in the sunlight, Jim counts his breaths and rolls free from the bed.

Isabella shall be waiting with her maids, having been up at the first show of sunrise, eagerly awaiting the moment she shall join the crown as his wife. The world is at rights. He, hot blooded male hero, what more could he want?

For the last ten years of his life, the treasure had brought him a manservant, but last night he had dismissed him and spent the night in his own company, faced toward the sea with the stars overhead.

But he buckles his own boots, as he did not long ago as a poor tavern boy, and if he closes his eyes, he can hear the choking laughter of Billy Bones, the buzz of flies and brandy.

But no, he is here now, the sun shading the backs of his eyes, and he cannot hide from the bells, tolling morning and future like an awakening of the dead.

* * *

 

Isabella had spoken to him, the night that John Silver reigned on the boat, had spoken about her shame as a Spaniard, and he, well he – a British gentlemen of means and riches – could make her a lady. Jim, so full and frantic in his feeling, had swollen his heart with the ghost of love and said yes, yes, he could, and with bravery he had never felt, kissed her full under the moon, and the salt spray had made her hair wild, skin rough and mouth ungentle.

This was the night where John Silver hid in the bowels of the ship, shackled and awaiting death, ten years of dreams rotted at the bottom of the sea. And Jim, loyal cabin boy, poor as a mouse, now a rich man with a titled fiancée, had counted his luck and his sorrow both.

As if he could leave Silver to die. Even Isabella had whispered her regrets against his lips, tasting the secret shame on his breath. So, Silver, on his longboat (with a crutch that rattled, but Jim said nothing, and hid his eyes from Silver’s smile) ventured out to the black sea, his laughter audible beneath the stars, and leaving Jim to his future.

The night hadn’t endured, but the promise had.

* * *

 

Isabella is a proud woman. Her Nursemaid had instructed her that pride was something a woman could never have enough of, beyond virtue and beauty, and upon stepping abroad the ship that first morning, she had laid eyes on Jim Hawkins and forgotten, for one passing moment, her need for pride.

Her Governess had scolded her so, within the creak of their shared cabin, to steer clear of the young man, to keep her nerves fret free and her legs tied together. And Isabella, how bored she was, the cages of that cabin keening so close, so close she could claw it until her dainty nails were smashed and her hair ripped free from lace and pearl comb. But oh! Kidnapped at knife point, marooned on an island, beset by Hawkins’s arrogance and later, by his affections. She had redefined her pride, and so be it, herself.

The day is born of a loveliness so complete that no bride could ask for better. From the window she can see the coast like diamonds on the shore. But the breakers, so high and loud, as the maid unfastens the latch on the window and the noise rushes in and drums in her ears. But it is a foolish thing to complain of, the sea, for had she not met her beloved on it?

It is hot. Frustratingly hot. They lace her corset, an iron criss cross down her back, and her skin prickles beneath her breasts as she lifts her chest to breathe. Her hair is scooped off her neck and fastened in sea pearls. She has no grand dowry to speak of, as her father vainly squandered it away, but she has her voice, her love, her body. Cream petticoats, blue and pink lace, and she stands in front of the mirror as much as a bride as she could ever be, and yet the weeks since their ship had found land, the definition of such had been harder to grasp.

She had boldly told her nurse she would grasp her destiny in both hands, when it came to her fate of marriage, that she would be an equal to her husband, their union a blessing ordained by God and each other. But here, in front of the mirror, she looks packaged. Lovely, yes, but tied in ribbons and trinkets, secured fast to keep her body erect and held in. Her Nurse had perished in tropical heats, fever and sickness a ravish on that pale old body, a body she had lambasted as dry and dusty as desert sand. And now, Isabella misses her, misses her with a burning, and she turns her head away from her maids and tells them, with scorn in her voice, to leave her be.

The maids leave, nattering below their breath of spoilt Spaniards with ruined reputation, and oh, she can hear them, of course she can! They believe her gentlemen has already had her, as she had frequented a ship full of filthy men and stood with her skirts above her ankles in a forest glen.

What wilderness Jim had given her, what _heat._ The life and lies no lady should ever see; men undressed, men eating open mouthed, men bloodied in belly and face, men pawing each other and paying no heed to her, her in her lace smock and sunlight shawl. Among them, she had felt alien, a foreigner not only in tongue, but in body and mind, and yet, as the weeks had passed, the heat and hunger increased, when she had seen death as naked as the sun, and somehow, she had changed with them, within herself. That final night, she mourned herself as a Spaniard and Jim, too eager to once again become a gentleman, offering his marriage as the world disappeared in their meeting of hands, of mouths.

But she had changed. This was the fear. Her ex-fiancée had looked upon her and seen a girl, a silly little girl, let loose upon the wolves, and mourned her dowry but not her beauty, and offered her a life among stinking wigs and stinking men in fine coats. At the end of the journey, with Silver gone – a pirate, a pirate whose dagger had touched her neck yet never her body, and how she had watched him, hawk like – and the two of them, stood side by side, ready to slip back into silk and titles. But what had her new fiancée seen as he gazed upon her? Something to be tamed for England? Why in these last few weeks had their touches been lukewarm, their kisses quick and desperate? Now the day has dawned, she runs her fingers down the trim of her bodice and feels every bit as alien as she did beneath that baking sky, hidden in the moss and dirt of the jungle. Her maids are nought but female shapes in white cotton and headdress. Jim Hawkins, her love, is now stranger then he was before, a common boy made rich man. Once upon a time they groomed wilderness in each other, now they tried to strangle it out of each other.

She has altered. Not to resemble him, nor the men she fought and resisted. Isabella has altered into something purely her, something so singular and separate it is terrifying to consider. It is not girl nor woman, it is female and all too aware of itself, and sings in her a siren song of malcontent.

She laughs. The memory of her Nurse, an old maid, trapped by what she could and would not do for men. And Isabella, proud Belle, trapped by what she will endure for the sanctuary of one.

 

* * *

 

When the bullets hit the powder, when the precious stones blew with plank and blood, did Jim hear Silver release a howl, a howl that sounded as gut deep as the devil, and so wretched was it, that even with the horrid weeks behind him at Silver’s mercy, it tore at Jim’s pity.  Silver had waded into the water, losing his balance, flailing like a blind man, and Jim had followed, the only one to do so, whilst the others stood pitiless on the shore.

They had not spoken of that moment, Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, holding one another in the breaking waves, Silver’s hollers of fury and sorrow, Jim silent and clinging tight. After there was only the quiet of the jail cell, the bitter words exchanged with the squire, Silver a wilted shape behind him.  It had been a moment, an impulsive moment, where barrier between captive and captor, innocent and guilty, cabin boy and cook had broken down to nothing but the sheer energy between them, the fraught history, and Silver had grappled onto Jim like a truth, like a lifeline, like a love.

 

* * *

 

Jim is dressed and ready. He enters the carriage as it begins its climb to the church on the hill, overlooking the beaches and bleached white houses. As the world rattles about him, he feels guilt for allowing Isabella’s shame to fester, taking her shame as a mask to cover his own, and he tries to comfort his thoughts on how beautiful she shall be. But why carry her shame? He had meant many a time to divide the gap and say, say as true as he could, that there was no shame in her, in what and who she was be her blood black red or blue.

_Maybe somebody who loves her can say that._

They arrive and Hawkins steps down. It is a private affair, this wedding, and his mother, who has survived the voyage from Bristol, shall be attending. The child in him hopes she shall be wearing her severe white blouse and puffed muffin bonnet. The adult in him begs that the ladies of the bride have dressed her in something respectable.

Amidst the minor flood of people, a carriage discreetly draws up at the back of the churchyard.

Out of it climbs a huge man, with a face broad and smiling, dressed in festive reds and a large hat with a scarlet plume. He hops down from his carriage, waving away the patronising hand of a bystander, and he comes just mere steps from the church wall before Jim feels every bone in his body become light as plaster.

Isabella, in her fine blue and lace, has not seen him. Amongst the rich prattling guests he is yet another well dressed stranger, but Jim, Jim feels the rock of the ship and hears the roar of the storm, like a siren call in his blood.

When his mother arrives, he knows now she shall be wearing her widow’s skirt and muffin bonnet.

* * *

 

 _Souls are strange things_ , Silver had said during the year before Treasure Island. Jim had been thirteen at the time, suspicious but still starry eyed, swinging in his hammock and listening to each tale. _Ye never know which one is gonna grab you, lad. My old Captain and I, were we strange souls, thrown about on a murky sea, but still Jim, still we prospered._

Silver had smiled a cunning smile, and looked upon Jim, who believed he had his meaning. That they, so separate in years, had souls that complimented and so they would be friends, and these were the days where Long John as a friend was all Jim wanted (although he had not known, curse himself, that said captain was Flint.)

What Jim learned later was wholly different, especially as ten years wiled by and he found himself woken by the harsh beam of Silver’s face and the start of yet another adventure, one that brought death and life and doubt, brought _Isabella._

That souls, no matter if old or battered or young and green, when two find the hooks in each other, there will always be a siren song between them, forever calling the other back, across sea and land and years. A fitful, frightful song, irresistible.

 

* * *

 

Silver barely hops past the gate before Jim waylays him into an alley, grabbing him by the scruff of his silk collar. Jim has him so close he could call it a hug if not for his knuckles white around Silver’s neck.

“What are you doing?” He hisses. “Somebody could see you! Hang you! After _everything_ …!”

“Hush, Jim, _hush.”_ Silver pats Jim’s hands, releasing his grip. “Why, I couldn’t miss such a day, could I? After all, seeing you so grown, so proud was I. Had to see you hitched, Jim Hawkins.”

Hitched.

He come to see him get _married._

The rush of noise in his ears escalates, and he sucks in air through his teeth, whistling down his throat. Someone is holding him steady, thick hands on his back and shoulder, leading him into the cool shadows of the back alleys.

“Jim, Jim. I have seen many a swab green before his big day, but this…”

He sounds smug. But surely Jim is imagining that.

“You are in no danger?” He finally says, staring down at Silver’s single buckled boot.

“Danger? No, Jim! Why in my new fine clothes, I am quite the gentlemen. Even have little delicacies like dried fruit and all manner of nut in my carriage.”

“The only difference between men and gentlemen is money,” Jim says, dully.

“Why yes, Jim.” Silver nods, ruffling his hair. Silver’s own is brushed thickly, his beard pleated pretty. “Speakin’ like a true man of the world.”

Jim looks up at Silver. The pirate is standing tall, a wicked old grin on his face.

“Why are you here really?” He questions. “Not for the diamonds, because you _obviously_ had some hidden.”

Silver taps the hollow end of his crutch with a smile.

“I have nothing for you,” Jim continues. “Nothing…no reason…”

“Why, Jim.” Silver claps a powerful hand on his shoulder. “Why you think so cold of me? I said before, how fond I was of you, before one other person, and that be Long John Silver ‘imself. Am I not allowed to come and see you grown and settled before I return to the seas myself?”

Jim remembers the cell after Silver had been captured. The low ceilings, the stones all mismatched like broken teeth, and Silver, too pristine and clever, an oddity among the brainless culls chained like animals. Jim had fought to death for a way to save Silver, even with the bloodied mark on his head where Silver had struck him, and in the cell where Silver had spoke of maps and legends, Jim had barely been able to hide the wet from his eyes.

Silver was leaving _again._

“The sea?” He says faintly. The roar of the tide is there, again, in his hearing. A prickle in his blood, an open gouge in his gut. Silver is watching him intently. “You…wish to return to the sea?”

“I cannot stay here, Jim, oh no. For one hour is plenty to stay for a wedding, but a day? Hidden I may be, but I know the squire be attending, and be him slow of mind, but he has keen eyes. No, one hour, that all be for me.”

The kiss is unexpected, for it comes from Jim, his lips light gravity on Long John’s, and he pulls away before he can even exhale. He presses the back of his hands to his eyes, the swell of shame and nausea gurgling like a storm. The bells chime louder. The sun and sky glare upon them and it takes everything he has not to flee, except for Silver’s hand, heavy as it is, resting on his shoulder.

Beneath the white glower of the Caribbean walls, Silver’s face is shaded, his eyes grave. The light upon him is strange, but Jim found any light on land looked odd on the maps of Silver’s changing face, and his expression changes many times as he looks upon Jim, and the fingers become snugger on his shoulder, bruising down to the bone.

“Well, Jim.” He says softly. “This is most unexpected. Most unexpected, indeed.”

“Silver.” Jim pleads. “Forgive me.”

“What is there to forgive, Jim?” Silver holds him at arm’s length, but his lips stick in a smile. “Why, except for the surprise of such an action, and dare Long John says to ‘imself, a kiss is better than the swing and snap of the noose, say I.”

In increments, he brings Jim in closer, until his arm has slipped from Jim’s shoulder to his back, until Jim’s cheek rests on the lapels of Silver’s coat, and so they stand together in that embrace, and Jim can smell the heady mix of gumbo and spice beneath the scent of laundered sheets and soap. Silver shifts with a grunt as Jim burrows into him further, his hand reaching up to tease Jim’s hair.

“Although, it has me thinking…” Silver continues. “Aren’t ye supposed to be hitching today, Jim Hawkins?”

“I’m a fraud.” Jim whispers. “A liar and a fraud. Isabella deserves better.”

“Many people do, and some don’t.” Silver hums to himself. He shrugs and smiles wide. “But she’s young, Jim. And a beauty, and wilful as they come, and there will be others, by thunder, others then an Oxford Boy she met less then several months to the day.”

The way he says it, so easy and clean, almost riles up his old Christian anger, for what would Silver know about heartbroken girls in periwinkle blue? But Isabella had chased his horse through Australian desert, had stood fearless in faces of pirates and had spoken tenderly for Silver, had saved Jim’s life and limb and for what? For him to prove once and for all what he was, what he had always been, what he had always denied to the woman who gave him birth. A wave chaser, a restless soul, a _pirate._

The feelings had arrived too soon, and the thoughts behind them too late.

“It seemed all so fast to me, Jim, and I was more than happy to stand in for your father on this blessed day, had I not known how unfatherly these feelings truly were.” Silver allows Jim to pull back and laughs uproariously at the look on his face. “Do not be so, Jim! You say you are a liar, yet the truth makes a foul fellow of your face.”

“A kiss is not a contract, Silver,” Jim warns, although his heart is so full of guilt and love he is surprised it doesn’t kill him.

“What kisses have you had, Jim?” He says, sweetly, and the hand in his hair holds tight, and Jim feels hot breath and beard as he is drawn close, but something beats in it so hard and real Jim accepts his defeat. Silver keeps Jim’s forehead met to his, and he whispers; “Love that springs wild is called a weed, Jim, and that that which be cultivated by sheer will and pain that some fools call love, well that be blooms with no sweet smell, dead inside. Will you leave Isabella with _that_?”

“No.” Jim shakes his head, again and again. “No, never.”

“Weeds it be then,” says Silver, and he ushers Jim into his coach and away.

The feelings came too fast, and the thoughts second, and as Jim flees the bells, he wondered if Silver had come not to be there for him, but had come _for_ him.

 

* * *

 

Ben Gunn was missing. Usually he acted as secret keeper between the lovers, but his humble abode was empty, and the small satchel of his belongings gone. It had been the small page boy who had pointed a finger at a vanishing carriage, who had spoken of the groom seen with a barrel-chested man in red with spitfire eyes and flashing teeth. Like a big ol’ dog, the boy had said.

* * *

 

Isabella has spent her wedding night with her mother in law (not really, for one needs to be married to have a mother in law, one needs to have exchanged rings and kisses in dark bedrooms.)

She had cried. Her pride had failed her there. She cried until her make up ran cracked and spoiling down her cheeks. She’d sheared her roses with her fingers, plucking the petals loose and ugly and cutting herself with the thorns. Her tempers were raw and awful, and she would have smashed her mirrors if her tears were merely hate or heartbreak.

She cries from sorrow, and the relief of it, and the sorrow of said relief.

She’d cried herself into calmness.

The afternoon of the wedding, Isabella had ripped off her dress, torn the lace from her corset and slept bare chested on the bed in her petticoats. That was how Sarah found her, sweating and cursing in the Caribbean humidity.

Sarah Hawkins was not a maid, but a west country widow. She had been kind to Isabella, although they had not met before today, and what wild and unwieldy thing Sarah had encountered for her future daughter? But Sarah was kind and firm and aged, an age that carried knowledge of men, or more aggressively, knowledge of the sea.

The night brought a ship vanishing from the harbour, already beyond the horizon. Sarah Hawkins had sat and glowered at the ocean as Isabella had slept (or tried to. She’d wondered if this was all a waking dream, a footpath between a wish and a nightmare.)

The next morning, the sun is gone. The wind rumbles fierce and thunder cracks the sea and spins the palm trees in frenzies.

Isabella wakes with dry eyes and a heart that is bruised but not broken. She braids her hair in Spanish style, gathers her sea pearls in a silk purse and hides it away in the top drawer. Her father’s assets are few, but there are enough to make good. She has seen how the world works. She has seen how men squabble, how men fight, how men die. How women separate themselves into little pieces to become palatable, to become packages, to become brides and maids and widows.

Sarah Hawkins rocks on the chair, still gazing wistfully out onward toward the ocean.

Jim’s letter is on her dresser. It is brief and desperate and woefully familiar to her, as maybe their hearts beat in tandem to the same pains, but not toward each other. She is furious, and betrayed, but sad for Jim and herself both. She cannot bring herself to hate him, nor she imagines that he hates her, for they shaped each other, their lonely destinies.

“What now?” Sarah Hawkins mumbles. Missus Hawkins, who ran an inn and raised a son in the absence of a father. “What now?”

She could be talking to Jim.

Isabella sits behind a desk like her father’s. In front of her, his shares, his ship companies. All which would have been Jim’s at the giving of her hand.

It’s a small start. The itch has gone. The fear hasn’t, but it feels more controlled, more natural, like a baby taking first breath.

She picks up her quill. The siren is silent.

“I will endure,” she says, and dips the ink.


End file.
